Using Barbarians to Control Barbarians
In the middle of August, a month later, Frank passed Gijo the address of a warehouse near Incheon Port.
It was a sweltering summer night, the tropical heat refusing to break. Gijo took Ma-ryang, Seogwang, Han-su, and Dae-ik in with him, and they found the place packed to the rafters with three thousand crates of American televisions.
Seogwang carefully worked a wooden crate open with a crowbar, and a Motorola set came out. He opened another, and this time it was an Emerson. Everything filling the warehouse was a budget model—Motorolas, Emersons, Admirals, and the like.
Sweat beading on his face from the work with the crowbar, Kim Seogwang turned to Gijo.
"Boss, these TVs sitting in here, I mean—stack a thousand of them into a tower right in front of Gwanghwamun and flip them all on at once, and wouldn't that be a work of art?"
The words were barely out of his mouth before Ma-ryang, standing behind him, smacked the back of his head with a sharp thwack.
"You looking to rot in a cell for a thousand years and then drop dead?"
"Aigoo, and right in front of the younger ones... I'm thirty-five this year!"
Kim Seogwang rubbed the back of his head and protested. Everyone laughed.
Gijo, though, was quietly startled. What Seogwang had just tossed off was a television artwork a full decade ahead of the artist Nam June Paik.
The five of them loaded three sets and hauled them up to Seoul, and the next evening they switched them on at Gijo's house. All three worked without a hitch. They were not as handsome on the outside as an RCA, but the picture was not so very much worse either; with the broadcast signal as poor as it was, they all looked much the same anyway. Having set them against the RCA, Gijo was satisfied.
The three thousand sets at Incheon Port went out on Cheongsan Transport trucks, bound for Dongdaemun Market. Once Lee Jeong-jae had confirmed the shipment with his own eyes, he took Gijo back to his office and, on the spot, laid down two hundred twenty-five million hwan.
How much money has this man made...?
Gijo was stunned. For all he knew, the funds had been drawn from Lee Ki-poong of the Liberal Party, or from Kwak Young-joo. There was no shortage of black money out hunting for a venture to sink itself into. And if a great many hands were in on the smuggling, so much the better—it meant that many more powerful men with a stake in protecting the trade.
"Will you be able to move that money as far as the Information Service? Shall I send some of my people along?"
"I'd be grateful if you would."
There was no real need, but to make a show of working hand in hand with the U.S. Information Service, he loaded several dozen of the Dongdaemun gang onto the trucks and headed there.
When he handed Frank the bag of cash, the American's mouth fell open.
"Mr. Lee, you've already unloaded the whole lot? All three thousand?"
"Yes. Send more. I think I can move another seven thousand."
"Well, we'd be glad enough to see televisions spread through Korea, but... all right. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars is back in hand, so I'll bring in another three thousand."
Frank kept cocking his head, as if he could not quite believe it.
"Who'd you pass them all off to?"
When Gijo told him it was Lee Jeong-jae, the man under Kwak Young-joo's protection, Frank nodded. Five years into his Korean posting, he was half a Korean himself. Give him a name and he knew the man.
"Once more sets are out there, the advertising revenue ought to climb too, shouldn't it?"
"I'm hoping we'll be in the black around the middle of next year."
"How deep in the red are you this month?"
"Still five million hwan. Once three thousand sets are in circulation, that ought to ease a little. I'm not worried about it."
"Ha. Then we're fine."
The small talk done, Gijo came to the point.
"Frank, there's one more favor I'd like to ask."
"Let's hear it."
There was nothing Frank would refuse a man who had recovered four hundred fifty thousand dollars in a single month.
"I'd like to use an AFKN mobile broadcasting unit."
"An AFKN mobile unit... AFKN's a radio station."
AFKN—the American Forces Korean Network—had come in with the outbreak of the Korean War and was, for the present, running a radio service.
"Frank, I need mobile television broadcast equipment. Put in a request with the Eighth Army."
"Mobile TV gear?"
Frank blinked. Gijo knew what was coming. In 1957, AFKN would open a television station in Korea, and the Eighth Army was surely already planning the launch. If the CIA put its weight behind the thing, could a mobile broadcast van not be brought in a little ahead of time?
"Hm... I'll look into it."
"But what are you planning to do with it?"
"Right now the station's signal only reaches the outskirts of Seoul, but in the end it'll cover the whole country. Before that happens, I want to show television to people out in the provinces."
"So you're planning a road show. To introduce TV nationwide."
"That's right."
Understanding what he was after, Frank firmed the promise.
"I'll do everything I can to make it happen. AFRTS is already operating in Japan. We can bring the equipment over from there."
AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service): the radio and television service of the United States Armed Forces.
"Thank you, Frank."
Frank broke into a grin.
"Look, Mr. Lee. It's been over two years since we met, and there's still no jeong in the way we address each other. You Koreans set great store by jeong, don't you? From now on, call me Frankie."
"Then drop the 'Mr. Lee' and just call me Lee."
"All right. Lee."
"Thanks, Frankie."
Gijo had succeeded in winning a second promise of support from Frank.
With the promise of U.S. Army mobile broadcast equipment secured, Gijo headed for Mapo to see his newborn second child.
"Come in, son-in-law."
Mr. Yun, the salt peddler who was now his father-in-law, received him as a true son-in-law. Gijo paid his respects to his in-laws first, then went to the room where Sunrye and their daughter lay.
It was high summer, yet they had the windows shut tight for fear a draft might seep into her bones, and the room was stifling. Gijo wiped the sweat from Sunrye with a towel dipped in lukewarm water, then looked down at their sleeping daughter. Perhaps it was because he had lived once already to the age of ninety. Gazing at that small life, he felt a tighter ache in his chest than he had when Yeongsu was born.
"You're disappointed she's a girl, aren't you?"
At Sunrye's words, Gijo's face said the very idea was absurd.
"What are you talking about? I'm twice as happy because she's a girl."
He was only sorry he could not take her up in his arms, for fear of waking her.
"How's your appetite?"
"Good. I'm eating well."
Sunrye was not his daughter by blood, yet Father-in-law Yun had gone out for seaweed and carp, the foods a woman needed while she recovered, and had taken real pains over her care. Gijo spent a while with Sunrye and the baby, then ate lunch out on the wooden veranda with his in-laws and Sunrye's younger half-siblings.
At the table, he made a request of them.
"I grew up an orphan. I have no parents of my own. I'd like the two of you to give the child her name."
His mother-in-law, especially, was startled, and grateful.
"Would that really be all right, the likes of us? Son-in-law?"
"Of course. The two of you are my parents now."
"Heh. All right, then. I'll have a few good names brought in. Later you can pick whichever one suits you."
His father-in-law said it with evident pride. When the meal was done, Gijo pressed spending money into the hands of Sunrye's half-siblings and left the house in Mapo.
To Cheol-ho, who would one day become a tax official, he said, as he gave him the money:
"Cheol-ho, once you finish high school, don't go thinking you'll head straight into the civil service. Try for university."
"Yes, brother-in-law. I'll think it over."
It was advice born of his previous life, in which he had watched Cheol-ho become a tax man too young and carry a quiet regret over it.
From Mapo he made for Jongno, where Gyeongmudae stood. Arriving at the Gyeongmudae Police Station, he sought out Kwak Young-joo, now its chief, and bowed low. So thoroughly did the man bask in Syngman Rhee's favor that he was racing up the ranks at a breakneck clip. Inspector, Superintendent, Senior Superintendent—he had blown through them in a flash. Next year he would make Assistant Commissioner. In truth, rank hardly mattered to Kwak Young-joo. He was as good as Rhee's own chief bodyguard, and even the head of the national police could not handle him lightly.
"Chief. I'm here."
"Yeah. Good, you came. President Lee."
Installed now in a larger office, and wielding still greater power, Kwak Young-joo no longer wore a pistol harness. He seemed to have decided he no longer needed such theatrics to make his authority felt. Gijo's eyes flicked over the papers on the desk. Among them lay a personnel file on Brigadier General Park Chung-hee. As chief of the Gyeongmudae Police Station, Kwak had his hands even in the postings of generals.
Catching the glance, Kwak spoke.
"That bastard Park Chung-hee. He's no ordinary tough customer."
"What do you mean?"
"He was commanding the 5th Division, wasn't he. When the blizzard hit last winter, a lot of the men in that division of his up and died."
"Yes..."
"So I put my weight behind having him held to account, and pressure came in from all over, telling me to let him live."
Kwak groused that Park—a product of the Manchukuo Military Academy who had later transferred into the Japanese Military Academy and, after liberation, joined the Korean Liberation Army—enjoyed the backing of no fewer than three factions: the Manchukuo Army clique, the Japanese Army clique, and the Liberation Army clique.
"I stuck him on unassigned status, and the bastard crawled off into the Army College."
He rubbed his fist and cracked his knuckles, pop after pop.
"One of these days I'm going to take that man apart properly."
He had been putting on a show of swagger, but the more he thought about it the hotter his anger burned, and out spilled his grievances against Park Chung-hee.
"I hated that Kim Chang-ryong, dead as he is, but I'll give him this—he did one thing right. He nearly had Park Chung-hee. What I can't stand about Park, see..."
He brought up Park's arrest at the time of the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion.
"Starting with that brother of his, Park Sang-hee, the lot of them are Reds. And a man like that walks around free and clear. The army's rotten. Rotten clean through."
As if the army were the only rotten thing—and coming from a man as far from clean as Kwak Young-joo, the complaint carried little weight.
Having vented, Kwak at last turned his attention to Gijo.
"Anyway, President Lee. What are you doing here?"
"The U.S. Information Service asked me to pass along a gift, to thank you for helping with the television business..."
Gijo drew from inside his jacket an envelope holding a thousand dollars.
"The Information Service sent this?"
"Yes. That's right."
Pocketing the thousand dollars—Gijo's own money—Kwak Young-joo smiled with satisfaction.
"I'm told there will be a second supply operation as well, and a third."
"Yeah? Tell them not to worry."
Having secured the safety of the smuggling runs still to come, Gijo looked once more at Park Chung-hee's personnel file lying on the desk. Again it came home to him that Park was no simple man. Kim Chang-ryong had failed to remove him, and Kwak Young-joo, for all his loathing, could not lay a hand on him either.
You could call it a gift for managing his connections, or you could call it the fruit of Syngman Rhee's way of ruling the army. Rhee split the military into factions and set them competing to outdo one another in loyalty to him, and at the same time he kept the army's power from gathering in any one man, lest the danger of a coup grow too great. And so the military had fractured into five or six camps, each of them busy shielding its own. Even when someone in their number committed corruption or blundered, they protected him with everything they had, for fear that if he were cut loose their own strength would thin.
Even Yu Jae-heung, whose command at the Battle of Hyeon-ri during the Korean War had brought an entire ROK corps to sudden self-destruction, remained in uniform, angling even now for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He too was sheltered by the graduates of the Japanese Military Academy, by the men of the Military English School, and by the old South Korean Constabulary clique.
Junior officers out of the Korea Military Academy, though, their faction still weak—those, Kwak Young-joo could discipline as he pleased. The freshly commissioned eleventh and twelfth classes could be swept aside on one pretext or another, and the factions would hardly blink. That was why Gijo meant to keep his bond with Kwak Young-joo close.
"Senior Superintendent. I'll be going now. If you ever need RCA sets, you've only to say the word. I've thirty standing ready."
RCA televisions that were never going to sell in any case. Better simply to hand them over to Kwak Young-joo.
"Yeah? Think you could send them as gifts to the places I tell you?"
"Of course. Send the list to the company. I'll have every one delivered in your name, Senior Superintendent."
"Ha ha, all right. President Lee, you've gotten a lot sharper lately. Coming in with it all ready on your own."
Kwak laughed, a rough, open laugh.
Once Kwak handed over the list of those to whom the televisions would go as gifts, Gijo would someday pass him, in return, the names of the original seventeen members of Hanahoe. Some four years still remained before the April 19 Revolution. Before Kwak Young-joo plunged into the abyss alongside Syngman Rhee, he would make certain that list changed hands.